


Private Lives

by GinMartini



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, season 3 canon divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:07:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27748732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinMartini/pseuds/GinMartini
Summary: Seventeen years apart and here they are, right back at the beginning.Can they walk away before destroying everything?
Relationships: Logan Echolls/Veronica Mars
Comments: 20
Kudos: 55





	1. The lies you tell yourself

It’s not the Camelot hotel, but it may as well be. 

The sheets bear a significantly higher thread count, the smell of cigarette smoke doesn’t linger, there’s not a neon sign in sight. Valet’s take your keys and bellhops call you ma’am. All these little things help you forget, momentarily, the reality of your situation. That money buys you anonymity, money buys your privacy, money buys you a hotel room mysteriously adjacent to a man, one you happen to know. Well.

You hand the bellhop a five and place the bag onto crisp white linen. A bed you will not have to make in the morning.

Peeling the jacket from your shoulders, you walk to the windows and you look at the San Diego shoreline. You watch the men and women, strolling back and forth, their footprints tracking lines behind them, proof of where they’ve been.

You draw the sheer curtains for privacy, undo your ponytail and check your phone. You message your husband.

_I’m here safe. Talk to you later. Don’t forget to feed the dog._

Like he’d ever let anyone forget. 

Three little dots bob and sway, then you get a response. 

_No worries. Love you._

You stare at that combination of seven letters for longer than is appropriate. Locking your phone, they disappear.

The room is earth tones and neutrality. A bed, a desk, a bathroom the size of your house. Gilded tapware and tiny bottles of shampoo, tiny bottles of whiskey.

You flop on the bed and kick off your boots. Hands settle on your rib cage feeling your body rise, then a cavern forms as you exhale. 

It helps calm the anticipation. And the dread.

Fingers laced, you feel for the platinum band and gently strip it from its position. The skin beneath white, keeping a permanent ring there.

The platinum slides easily into the zippered corner of a handbag. Out of sight, out of mind.

A key fob beeps the connecting door, and it opens slowly. You jolt upright.

The face that peers through is all wide smile, confidence, and relief. You feel yourself take a full breath for the first time in 28 days. 

“Logan Echolls,” you say.

“Mars,” he replies, voice low and thick. In one short syllable, declaring you _his_ Veronica. The old Veronica. Reborn as Mars. At least for tonight.

Desire grows deep in your belly, warm and dangerous. 

You see his finger without adornment, but with a matching white line.

Wasting moments is for those who have time to waste them. There’s no shyness. No hesitation. He walks in six steady, even paces across the floor.

To you. 

He lifts you, and you oblige. Lips seeking and remembering after a month long hiatus. His kisses are fierce and familiar. They speak of passion, intensity, lost days.

Lost years.

Heat abuts heat, his hardness presses against your stomach. Pulsing.

You plead into his mouth as he strips you urgently. Clothing falls silently to the floor in little piles of lies. 

He’s an explorer, hands traverse every dip and swell. You wonder how touches could ever feel like this, your body being re-charged inch by inch.

He sheaths himself and enters you. 

Trimmed fingernails dig into the firm of his back, his shoulders flexed and taut as he thrusts. Face in the smooth of his neck you inhale deeply and take him in before letting kisses fall to his collarbone. You want to press down teeth and bite the flesh, mark it as your own forever. 

But you don’t. 

The first time is always fireworks, it’s the explosive, gripping desperation of absence. Hands roaming, bodies slapping. Fullness and emptiness all at once.

You whisper, “Logan,” like a secret as you come. 

He follows seconds behind.

************************************

He glows in the filtered sunshine, lithe and strong. Warming the room with his light. Your heart warms too. The pads of your fingertips tour his abdominals lazily, a kiss falls on your forehead. It’s all about these snatches of time, tangled in white sheets. Together.

You think about running into him at the grocery store after seventeen years, leaning against a cart, beside the yogurt tubs like soldiers. 

Peach. Strawberry. Vanilla.

Brown eyes you spent years trying to forget are in striking distance. Awkward hugs, sweaty hands, and a promise of a shared drink. 

That drink had continued well past a year now.

The reins of history and genetics tighten their noose around you. Lianne and Aaron played these games, it’s no surprise that you both ended up here. Despite best efforts to avoid those inherited traits. You knew it the moment you saw him in the dairy aisle. _This_ was inevitable.

Worse than the lovemaking is the stolen moments of quiet. The times he calls for room service and knows your order without asking. It’s in reading the newspapers draped across the bed. It’s the casual passing of fries from one plate to the other. Gestures small and familiar speak of the past and are a reminder of a future you don’t share.

You talk of work and of news, but never home, or the people who reside there. These things you keep private. It's easier that way.

**************************************

On Sunday morning you shower, washing him from your body, watching his touch trickle down the drain. The ridden evidence signifies the end to another weekend, your silent tears find their way down. 

The mood has shifted now. The room feels cold.

He says, “I’m going to leave her,” and kisses you goodbye.

And you nod, but you don’t reply with the same because you try not to speak in falsehoods.

Ironic.

You drink in those eyes, steal a final touch, and watch the door close.

You wait half an hour and take back your room key, smiling at the receptionist, yes thankyou I enjoyed my stay.

“Your bill has been settled.”

But of course.

You walk to your car, unlock it, open the door and sit inside.

The key dangles in the ignition, unturned. 

Your vision blurs, but you blink it away. Reaching for the bag, undoing the zipper, you slip the platinum band back where it lives, then use that hand to swipe at the welling in your eyes, banishing it. In the rear-vision, you catch your reflection and pointedly look away.

It will be the last time. 

You lie to yourself. 

It’s never the last time.

Not with him.


	2. Paper or Plastic?

_ One year earlier. _

***********************

It’s a forgotten birthday cake for a 43rd Birthday.

Your mind drowns in mental lists, growing endlessly and never fully retracting. You ticked off a gift, but forgot to pencil in a cake. The in-laws narrow their eyes at you. Keith cracks a knowing grin. You’re not Suzy Homemaker, never pretended to be.

You promise, ten minutes maximum. Out the door and back again before a chance to miss you. Empty plates sit on the table, knives and forks askew.

“Don’t worry about it, love,” husband pulls you close, reassuring, alone beside unscrubbed pots.

You meld to him, considering.

“No. You need cake, you can’t officially age until you have blown out candles,” you say.

“Well, I don’t want any then,” he smiles, a soft kiss on the corner of a mouth.

“You’re getting one, buddy,” you add, grabbing keys.

He shakes his head, walking back to family around a table.

You will provide cake. Something to shove a candle in. To light. To blow out. To wish upon.

**********************************

Setting sun, crimson and gray, tinged with dusky wisps. You pull your visor, shield your eyes. 

The grocery store two blocks away is not your usual, but good in a pinch. 

You grab a cart and collect a cake, thick white icing and piped rosettes. A packet of silver candles. 

One last thing.

Cream.

Beside the yogurts, boxes in rows, whipping cream. Arm outstretched.

“I thought you were a half and half girl,” a kindred voice so familiar. The world falls through your feet as you turn your head.

California eyes meet yours, singing of sand and salt air.

A sharp intake of breath, “Logan?”

“Flesh and Blood,” delivered with mirth.

You laugh at the absurdity. Just here for red velvet, the last thing you expect is  _ him _ .

Pull at your creased shirt, smooth your hair, wish you took a moment for mascara on lashes. You will him not to look too closely. But he moves in and takes you in his arms. A hug from an old friend. You reciprocate, eyes fluttering closed at the easy contact. Warmth seeps through cotton.

“In all the grocery stores in all of Neptune, I run into you,” you say, channeling Bogart.

“I thought you were in New York?”

You shake your head. 

“I can’t believe  _ you _ stayed!” you scold.

Eyes smiling. You drink him in wishing for natural light, for open spaces to explore the lines of his face. The slight graying of his hair at the temples, the spattering of stubble on a sharp jawline. Instead, you get humming fluorescents and the echo of 90s pop music.

In that light you see a ring. Gold. Simple.

“Married?” You ask a question you know the answer to. Lazy research on idle days.

“Yeah, twelve years and two kids. Twins boys are ten now.”

You mouth a wow. 

He asks about you.

You display your ring and nod. “Six years. One stepson, he’s fourteen.”

“You, a stepmom!” he cringes, “Good luck to him.”

You laugh, “You’re not wrong.”

He draws a step back, assessing, “How long has it been, Veronica?”

Distracted by your name leaving his lips, it takes a moment to reply.

“Freshman year,” you answer and do the maths, “Seventeen years.”

It’s his turn to mouth a wow. 

His neck is lean, shoulders broad, a black henley and jeans. Hair cropped short. His cart full of green bushes, root vegetables, ripe fruit.

You struggle to associate. Logan lays tangled in your childhood. In angst and fights. In first love. He lays in photo albums under a bed, memories trapped between pages. 

Now he stands before you with a shopping list resting in long fingers, written in a foreign cursive hand. 

Flesh, blood,  _ Logan _ . 

He looks at you, looking at the list.

“Well, it’s not your birthday yet. So you’re just going to head home and eat an entire cake?”

Seventeen years and he remembers your birthday.

“Would you judge me if I did?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“It’s for my husband.” It seems so formal, but you can’t seem to say his name.

Logan nods.

When you stray from home life, the words come easier. You laugh about old friends, old times. The reasons for the demise in your friendship are bygones. They washed away in the tides of time, along with your youth. 

He tells you about work as you stack building blocks, piece by piece, reconstructing him. His shape reforms, changed, but the essence remains.

This chance encounter, fleeting. You clutch the moments and linger. Not yet ready for it to end. The earth spins on its axis, sixteen miles per minute. But not you, not him. 

Shoppers pass in steady currents, parting and rejoining. Past two old friends, a tall brunette and a short blonde, finding seventeen years, long lost, in an aisle.

His cart incrementally drifts closer to yours, the laws of grocery store attraction. Red velvet and vegetables between you. 

Your phone vibrates, glance at it.

_ Are you okay? _

“I better go,” three words so hard to say.

“It was so great seeing you, V.” His smile reaches the tips of pointy ears.

“You look happy,” you say, and you mean it. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen him this content.

“You too.”

A hand moves in a wave and turns the cart away from him. You were never good at this part. 

“Hey?” he calls and you turn on heels, back to the past.

“Yeah?”

“Wanna have a drink sometime?” 

You say yes. What’s the harm in a drink with an old friend?

He hands you a phone, and you put your number in it. Under V. 

V for Veronica. V for Virtuous.

****************************

You arrive late and out of breath without running. The party awaits. You have a story about a lost and found wallet, elaborate and detail rich.

Lie number one. 

The truth would be easier, but you want the moment as yours somehow. 

Candles lit upon stacked red velvet, cupped hands protecting orange flames. You gently place it before your husband.

His eyes float to yours, pale and blue. Happy Birthday echoes in the background, voices out of tune.

The warmest of smiles crease his softly bearded cheeks and he blows. 

He’s wishing for you. He always does.

And for the first time in six years, you’re looking at him, but thinking of another.


	3. Warm June Nights

Single malt, one ice cube. 

A glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

You sip at it, while his remains untouched. The cube of ice has lost its sharp edges, the soft melt swirls into caramel hues. 

“Are you going to drink that?’ you ask. Sixty-five plus tax a glass.

He shakes his head, “I’ve been sober twelve years now.”

Cock an eyebrow. 

“So why did you order it?” 

He shrugs, “It makes people uncomfortable, I invited you for a drink, least I could do was order one.” 

His arms, sleeves rolled to the elbows, tanned skin, splashes of freckles and light hair. A vein between knuckles protrudes, pulsing. 

You sit in a restaurant, modern, dark, perched atop cliffs south of Neptune.

Pleasantries bestowed, small talk exhausted. There are things you want to say, _need_ to say. But they sit on your tongue like his ice cube, melting.

He smiles at you, luminous eyes.

You smile back. 

“I want to say I’m sorry, Veronica,” He steals the ice from your mouth.

“I made bad decisions. Lots of them, especially in high school, college, most notably related to you. For that, I’ll always be sorry.”

“Well, that’s a bit unfair.”

His body tenses, “Why?”

“I was going to say the same thing, you stole my line.”

A soft smile, shoulders relaxing, “Jinx then.”

“Buy me a coke?”

“How about another wine?”

You nod. 

“I know you did it for me,” you continue a closed conversation, “The Gory thing. The Piz thing. I just couldn’t see it at the time. Hindsight is a wondrous thing.”

“It's fine,” he offers, the flick of a hand striking away the apology you waited seventeen years to give.

It’s really not. 

You share charcuterie, then sorbet. Mutual apologies breach a dam bank, once opened, spill forth. Without hesitation you both talk until words are exhausted, tell him things you’ve never said out loud before. But you don’t speak of him, or her, or _them_.

The lights dim, the server hovers. The room has cleared, it’s time to leave.

He asks if you want to take a walk, points to the surf.

Anything so this won’t end. 

Kick off heels and step onto fine grains, still warm from a June sun. Saltbush and dune grasses caress your calves.

The moon lights the foam and roll of the waves, never ending. The ocean, his adopted home.

He strolls beside you in safe distances, wide strides.

You observe in darkness, seeking a key to unlock him. This man, this husband, this father. The photos you found of her, of _them_ , a cardboard cutout. 

Reach the rocks and turn back, footprints, laugher, pauses that speak louder than words ever could.

Back at the cars, you wait.

The two of you are a line break, a hyphen, an apostrophe, one word, waiting for the next. A paperback of open endings, unfinished paragraphs, and a blank last page.

Maybe this is the final line of the book? Open the door, start the engine, drive away.

The End?

You stand by the car, devoid of any further reason for this to continue. Smooth your skirt, distract your hands. Back pressed against the blue of your Honda under golden streetlights. Shoes of asphalt.

The car lot long vacant, gulls chortle in the distance, occupying the silence.

“I know it’s a cliche, but it’s been really good to see you,” he says.

“You know I love a good cliche.”

“Don’t we all, Mars?”

You should correct him, you’re not Mars, haven’t been for a long time. But you don’t. Fear prevents movement, speaking, rattling the spell you’ve been under since a moment beside shopping carts.

He makes to leave. You hold your breath. 

“Bye, Logan.”

The way you say his name. It’s not a goodbye, it’s a call.

He pauses, still facing away. Fighting private battles.

Turning, he opens his mouth to speak, but words fail. Eyes lock, expression inscrutable. You try to avert your gaze, but he holds you. 

Hypnotized you stand.

Minutes? Hours?

His voice finally comes, “Why can’t I get in my car, Veronica?”

You shrug, “Clearly I’m no master.”

The hint of a smile tinges serious lips.

“Can I be honest about something?” He asks, a single step in your direction.

No.

“Sure.”

“I nearly canceled on you. I picked up the phone so many times.”

You nod, “Why?”

Face to the black sky, searching constellations for answers, he replies, “I don’t know. History.” 

Hands go in and out of pockets, the toe of a loafer scrapes hard ground.

“Did you tell her you were meeting me?” The question tumbles, unhindered from your mouth.

A face whips up to consider you.

“No,” he confides.

Silence, all consuming.

“Why?”

The same reason you said nothing. The same reason you bought a new dress, tousled hair in soft waves, pulled new underwear up your thighs.

The possibilities. However wrong they are.

A held gaze like foreplay, even paces and he’s before you, close, you’re looking up, warm breath on your nose.

“Because of _this_ ,” he says, lips seeking yours, or yours seeking his? Fervent mouths coupled, he reaches a hand to your cheek, tasting like seventeen. Pressing your back against front fenders, the length of his hardness felt through a skirt.

Fingers fan a breeze on the hollow of your throat. After years of black and white, a touch like technicolor.

Subterranean tremors shatter the familiar grounding you once knew, but the surface remains uncracked.

Nothing has changed. _Everything_ has changed. 

Attraction, dread, arousal, a maelstrom in your core. He pulls his lips away, hovering close, chests heaving into the pause.

“Is this what you want?” he asks.

“Yes,” you reply without hesitation.

Flushed lips meet again, tongues dueling in hot sugar sweeps. Delerium takes over.

A car door opens and you’re pulled inside into back seats of adolescence, reimagined.

The sounds of the ocean dimmed by glass and sharp moans. You grab at him, greedy. Ridding him of a shirt and feeling the chest below, the one you burrowed yourself into, below tacky blue fish at the Neptune Grand.

A tongue on starving skin, a cry into the night. The ghost of a love once shared emerges from its grave, haunting you.

Wet lips on peaked buds, sliding lower still as famished pores rise to meet him, core warm and slick. He makes languid contact, and your breathing falters.

Standing in the Pacific, riptide dragging at your feet, drawing you into the ocean, powerless against the pull. He finds the place inside of you, only he knows how to find. The crook of a finger, pursed lips, sucking. You draw a husky moan, reclined on leather.

A symmetry in movement, these out of character acts. 

He draws back, rifles through a wallet, wrapper on the floor, he wraps himself in latex, then in you.

Teeth drag on wanting flesh, the dip of a muscled neck you sink in. The element of danger, of wicked vice and sin. You toil in the depths of hell together.

If it’s so bad, why does it feel so good?

Hurried thrusts, grasping for release, lips find yours in the darkness. Eyes, cocoa brown, clarity and truth within them. 

A shared release from within your cage.

Damp kisses adorn your brow, eyes flutter closed. 

The mess of it all reserved for those moments afterward. When the heat has gone from a boil to a gentle simmer. A search for black underwear on the floor, finding them beside your husband’s cashmere sweater. 

Hooking lace over each foot, each knee, shuffling them up sticky thighs. 

He looks at you, the same dread lurking in dilated pupils. You search them for answers, for a secret pocket promising that everything will be okay.

A wide palm across your cheek brushes the dampness forming, leaning in, kissing it, transferring your salt tears to his lips.

It’s then you know, you’ll never be okay again.

  
  



	4. The End, or the Beginning?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos for this fic. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. It started as a challenge to myself to tell a story using as few words as possible. 
> 
> Thank you to SkylaRose, whose lovely message to just send some positive vibes my way, drew me out of my funk and encouraged me to finish this after I’d abandoned it. Thank you.

Months turn into years. Life segments itself into manageable fragments. 

Real life. The one with a husband, a stepson, a second hand Honda with a roomy backseat.

Fantasy life. The one with Logan in hotel rooms. Momentary bursts of existence. Touches to sustain until the next encounter.

Both lives become lies, on top of lies, on top of lies. 

A gray afternoon, entombed in a blanket of clouds. You’re home, elbow deep in suds and breakfast cereal bowls.

Two lives converge with the echo of a doorbell.

Rubber gloves stripped in a sodden pile. You open the door.

It’s _her_.

Her from the photos. Supple and delicate and mascara stained. And she’s staring at you, standing on _your_ doorstep.

A grenade.

You and Logan pulled the safety pin together. Nobody will survive the blast. 

“Can I help you?”

“It’s _you_ ,” she says, firing shrapnel. Studying you the way you studied her behind the safety of a computer screen. A sharp haircut and even sharper collarbones. Tears spill from her eyes and drop from her jaw like raindrops on a roof’s edge.

You have no words. Linger behind a screen door in flip-flops and jeans.

“I just needed to see you, to see what made him do this,” a painted, pointed finger outstretched in your direction.

Quiet footsteps from behind. Casual steps of inquiry from a concerned husband.

“Is everything okay?” He asks, a reassuring hand upon a shoulder.

“You’re married _too_?” She spits at the sight of him.

The hand swiftly pulls away.

A sound. Part laugh, part howl emanates from her throat.

You’re rooted in place. Heart knocking perilously against a ribcage, searching for a way out. Searching for safety, searching for _him._

It’s a Wednesday. Like any other Wednesday, except it’s not. It’s the Wednesday life as you know it ends. Unraveling on your front porch.

“What’s going on?” Your husband asks. 

You’re a rat, a phantom, a spider, scuttling in the dim. Well practised. But in Neptune suburbia, you have nowhere to hide. Neighbors peer through screen doors, clicking their tongues.

“Ask your wife how long she’s been fucking my husband,” yells Belinda, and a hush falls after biting words. She is Belinda now because you cannot squirrel her existence into the shadows when she stands on your lawn. 

She is real.

Try as you might, words, syllables, sounds won't exit your mouth.

Her keys jangle as she falls into a BMW, swiping at wet eyes and speeds away. You stare until the car has long passed the stop sign, passed the school. All so you don’t have to turn and look at him.

Chris.

Chris, your husband with the soft beard, the rough hands. With the blindsided eyes. Eyes that tell you _this_ is the moment. Inevitable. That one you simultaneously dreaded and wanted all this time, and now it’s here. 

“Is it true?”

You nod, head downcast.

“How long?”

“Two Years.”

“It’s Logan, isn’t it?”

Glancing back, you don’t have to answer. Because he knows.

Chris’s silence is scarier than screams as you pack a bag. Don’t look at the photos on the walls, don’t look at your unmade bed.

Just go.

Out the front door he hung, down the stone footpath he built, to your car.

Look at your phone.

A message. From Logan.

_I couldn’t do it anymore. I told her. I moved out._

It was just a Wednesday, your day off work. Bill paying day. Laundry day. Grocery day.

It was supposed to be a nothing day. 

Instead, it was everything.

****************************************

Drive with no direction, no home. Back seat full of clothes. A heart full of shame.

He calls. Once. Twice. Answer on the third. 

He’s at the Neptune Grand.

So you are too. 

The gold elevator. Your life hanging in a bag on your shoulder. Torn edges fray as you walk.

Room 672. 

Logan opens the door. You drink the elixir of coffee-colored eyes. Reflecting you. Your pain, shared.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I should have given you more warning.” Red rims, aura drained. He walks across the suite in purgatory. A shell pacing a room.

An open bottle of Lagavulin on the table, two empty glasses.

“Was it bad?” He asks. 

You nod. The standard. 

And you don’t ask the same, because his pain surpasses your own. Children do that. Tiny lives you make, love, then ruin.

Fall onto the bed. Kicking off shoes.

He walks to the bottle, pours a glass and bathes in the scent of peat and smoke. So close it burns his nostrils. He doesn’t drink, replacing it on the bar cart.

“What made you tell her?” You ask.

Folding himself beside you on white sheets, eyes to the ceiling.

“I told her because every day I wake up beside the wrong person. Today, I realized I can’t do that anymore.”

Logan pauses, eyes the glass of whiskey, then you. Two vices in the same room.

“Do you want to wake up with me?” He asks. 

It’s a Wednesday. Like every Wednesday, like every _day,_ every night, every blink, the only place you want to be is with him. 

So you coil your body around his, soft hands on soft skin. He melds to you.

Thursdays would be for reality. Hard discussions. For divorce, for custody, for alimony, for the way to move forward.

Tonight. It’s just you, Veronica. And him, Logan.


End file.
